WHATELY – Chief James Sevigne didn’t sugarcoat the Commonwealth’s increased demands on the Whately Police Department, or the costs.

“We’re looking right in the $5,000 range for training each officer,” Sevigne said. “It is an investment, from the town’s perspective.”

Sevigne came before the Selectboard last week to clarify the difficulties created by the state requirement, established by the Police Reform Bill signed into law on Dec. 31, 2020, that all police officers, even current part-time officers, receive full-time training through the Police Academy. Whately’s police chief explained that under the regulations, part-time officers will need to be full-time certified, which in the past was not a requirement for them.

Will that make it harder for Sevigne to staff his department? Certainly.

“We’ve got six [part-time] officers we have to put though this course to keep them as police officers,” Sevigne said. “But what may come up is, that after they’re certified as a full-time officer, they may take a job elsewhere as a full-time officer. We may lose some of our [part-time] officers in the next three to five years.”

Sevigne informed the Selectboard that half of those local part-time officers have no interest in seeking full-time work elsewhere. “The more immediate concern is that 200-hour training,” Sevigne said.

According to the website of the Municipal Police Training Committee, part-time officers will need 40 hours each in added training in firearms use, EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operator Course) and defensive tactics. That is on top of 80 hours of online lessons and content testing.

Sevigne was matter-of-fact in describing the lack of preparation necessary to carry out the new training, or even the testing of part-time officers, by the state.

“We recently got an email from the HR Division that basically said, ‘We can’t test all the people you want us to test,’” Sevigne said. ‘“We don’t have the facilities, we don’t have the people, we can’t do the assessment tests.’”

Part-time officers will train at the Bridge Academy, a temporary program that will train officers for three years and then be dissolved. Brian Domina, town coordinator, told the board that part-time officers with names beginning with A through H will be trained in the first year, I through P in the second year, Q through Z in the third.

The commonwealth purchased 12 vehicles to assist with training, but a town must show significant hardship to use them. Rather, the vehicle for emergency driver training for Whately officers will be supplied by the town.

“We’ll use the sedan we have. We’re checking now to see if it will go through the punishment of that class,” Sevigne said. “If it goes down, we won’t be out a frontline cruiser.”

Sevigne and other law enforcement officials in Franklin County have responded to the new training demands by organizing sessions at the former military base at Devens. Those trainings will cover the 120 hours of driving, defensive tactics, and firearms. Part of the rationale for the Devens trainings is the burden the extra training puts on part-time officers who work a full-time job elsewhere.

“It’ll be a difficult thing for some officers who have a regular job,” Sevigne said. The police chief concluded by getting blunt about the new staffing issues facing the Whately Police Department. “It’ll be hard to get anyone to commit to going to that academy and work two or three shifts a month.“